AdWords Overdelivery? More Like AdWords Overreach

The latest notice in a series of troubling announcements that form a trend of control over our AdWords accounts being wrested away in favor of automation popped up in our MCC today.

Before, AdWords could potentially spend up to 20% past your daily budget cap (traditionally set by that magic monthly budget divided by 30.4) based on the amount of available traffic on a given day. Now, depending on the criteria the system bases “high quality traffic” on, your daily budget is effectively moot (granted, you should theoretically never be charged more than the defined monthly limit – 30.4 x your average daily budget, otherwise you’ll be issued an overdelivery credit per AdWords’ documentation.

In theory, this should be great – capturing all of that valuable traffic out there while still staying within the constraints of a monthly budget is a no-brainer. In practice, this has a high potential of going poorly. Suppose you’re a small business, or otherwise don’t have a strictly defined monthly budget (perhaps you’re testing a specific initiative outside your ordinary ad spend, or you’re just starting to dip your toes into the AdWords ecosystem) , or you’re in a highly saturated, high competition vertical – hopefully, the overdelivery has a great ROI for you and therefore justifies the practice. Otherwise, even the overdelivery credit you get can become a potentially futile case of throwing good money after bad. If overdelivery is as functional as Smart Goals or Optimized Ad Rotation (the system heavily favors older ads, even with lower conversion rates & engagement), this spells trouble for account performance, not to mention effectively pacing budgets throughout the month. At very least, the new AdWords overdelivery policy merits heavy observation until we can get a collective sense of how well it functions.

In order for automation to be effective, it must be introduced with clearly defined strategy & rules in place, along with a solid foundation. When automated strategies are effective, they are a boon to ROI – unfortunately, the relentless creep towards automation in the AdWords platform has yet to provide stable, dependable success. Even industry leading automation platforms like Marin and Kenshoo can quickly lead to mediocre (at best) results in a case of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Rather than being worried about automation putting me out of a job, I’m optimistic – now, more than ever, successful pay per click efforts will need experienced human eyes on them in order to drive the best possible results.

To ensure you’re getting the best ROI from your paid media campaigns, schedule a comprehensive audit.